The WhistlePig “100/100” Rye (50 ml old school holy water vial)

Tasting notes:On the nose, we get cut grass, but the grass itself is amazing, high end stuff: it’s driving a lawn mower through the Elysian fields (thought we were going somewhere else there, huh?). There’s also a faint hint of chlorine, alongside butter and coconut, as if one were lying poolside betwixt a pair of Coppertone™-swathed lounge Betties. Finally, we detected subtle tobacco notes, as with an antique brass ashtray merely dusted with Partagas ash, early in the cigar, before one’s mind drifts to other things, like ferrets (but please note: not only were no ferrets harmed in the writing of this review, but it’s also the case that we detected no hint of ferret musk in this rye). This whiskey is remarkably smooth on the mouth: the rye bite you expect never quite arrives. It’s a very young kitten gumming your throat, but from the inside. And while you’re inside an oak barrel. The mouth is terribly flavorful: a glob of vanilla ice cream on a thin base layer of cherry cobbler. With some pepper on the back end. Add a little water, and it’s even smoother. It doesn’t modulate much at all with the addition of water. It’s like the world’s longest door stop (coincidentally, with the world’s lowest slope). As you get to the finish again, though, you find that the water has created, in a process as mysterious as that which gives rise to Sea-Monkeys, a spiny sea urchin with wasabi paste on the tips of its spines to linger in the throat. But in a good way. In the very best of ways.

Rating:

–On the scale of prickly things that are oh so good–The WhistlePig 100/100 Rye is the puffer fish–Getting your Fugu (河豚) on is cool: it’s rare, it’s dangerous, it’s exhilirating. But if you can get both, play it safe, and have the Whistlepig. Actually, if you really need us to tell you that, then by all means, go ahead, have the fish!

—Stephen

Our thanks to Daniel Khan, Connor Wood, and WhistlePig for the sample!